Abstract
With the deepening of the Software Defined Vehicle wave, the automotive operating system has become the core technological foundation of the intelligent vehicle industry and a strategic high ground of global competition. Under the "three poles, multiple players" landscape dominated by BlackBerry QNX, Android Automotive and Huawei HarmonyOS, how resource-constrained late entrants achieve strategic breakthrough remains an open question. Drawing on multimarket contact theory and the awareness-motivation-capability (AMC) framework, this study constructs an analytical framework of "multimarket structure, competitive asymmetry, flanking window identification and focus differentiation breakthrough" and applies it to the case of ACT Company, a Chinese emerging automotive operating system supplier. The findings show that intensive multimarket contact among international giants generates mutual forbearance, that competitive asymmetry between giants and late entrants in awareness, motivation and capability creates flanking windows in specific segments, and that late entrants should concentrate limited resources on segments where giant motivation or capability is structurally constrained, building hard-to-imitate differentiated value through source-code-level customization, rapid delivery, cross-chip adaptation and localized services. The focus differentiation strategy adopted by ACT Company, targeting highly customized vehicle programs of domestic OEMs and overseas mid-to-high-end delivery markets, validates the feasibility of the flanking breakthrough path and provides a replicable strategic reference for Chinese automotive software firms.